Open Interest Boom as BTC Eyes $70K!

CoinGlass reported that Open Interest on Bitcoin futures contracts reached a record high of $40.5 billion.

Author

Danielle du Toit
October 21, 2024

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Here's what we've got for you today:

  • Bitcoin Open Interest Exceeds $40B Amid Brush Near $70K

  • Vitalik Buterin Shares Strategies to Address Ethereum Centralization Risks

  • Prediction Markets are Not Being Manipulated - Kalshi Founder

  • Tapioca Foundation Offers $1 Million Bounty to Recover Stolen Funds

👀 Bitcoin Open Interest Exceeds $40B Amid Brush Near $70K

Open interest (OI) on Bitcoin derivatives reached a record high on Oct. 21 after BTC came close to hitting $70,000.

  • CoinGlass reported on Oct. 21 that Bitcoin futures OI reached a record high of $40.5 billion. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) had about 30.7% of the OI, while Binance had 20.4%, and Bybit had 15%.

  • High OI levels can lead to cascading liquidations during sharp price movements, which could trigger forced selling and rapid BTC price declines.

  • The most recent flush-out happened in early August, and it caused BTC prices to drop by close to 20% in less than two days.

The Ethereum co-founder released a new blog post as part of his series on Ethereum’s future, this time addressing centralization risks.

  • In his previous posts, Vitalik Buterin discussed the "Merge" and "Surge" upgrades, which focused on transitioning to PoS and enhancing the blockchain’s scalability.

  • Buterin's latest post focused more on concerns about potential centralization in Ethereum's PoS system. He places specific focus on block construction and staking capital provision, which could threaten the network's decentralization and censorship resistance.

  • He proposes addressing these risks through both protocol-level changes and application-level strategies, like promoting specialized staking hardware, incentivizing solo stakers with airdrops, and reducing MEV through advanced application design.

Former President Trump's big lead over Vice President Kamala Harris on Polymarket recently sparked some manipulation concerns.

  • Tarek Mansour, the founder of the Kalshi prediction market, defended the accuracy of current prediction market results by providing comparable data from Kalshi.

  • He brushed off the idea that a few large whales are skewing the odds for Trump. He also revealed that the median bet size for Kamala Harris is $85, which is larger than Trump's $58.

  • Mansour placed a lot of emphasis on the fact that Kalshi is an "American-only" market, which disproves claims that foreign manipulation is influencing the current prediction market odds.

The Tapioca Foundation offered a $1 million bounty to the person who stole $4.7 million from its decentralized finance protocol during a “social engineering attack.”

  • The breach happened on Oct. 18, and resulted in the loss of 591 ETH and $2.8 million in USDC after the vesting contract for Tapioca DAO Token (TAP) and the UDSO stablecoin was compromised.

  • The incident was made possible because of a phishing attack on co-founder "Rektora." They unknowingly downloaded malicious software during an interview, which gave the attacker access to the contract ownership.

  • After the breach, Tapioca managed to "hack the hacker" and successfully recovered 1,000 ETH. However, the attacker still holds a large amount of Tapioca’s funds.

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